Trip to Auschwitz

[Paulus II]

To my mind, there is no better reminder or memorial to the victims of the camps, than to keep the camps standing and in decent condition, and to continue to show the original films of camp conditions at liberation

Totally agree with this (and the rest of John's post for that matter!)

Driving up to Auschwitz I, the first thing you see is parking attendants on both sides of the road waving to you, come and park here, come and park here. Turning on to the parking lot in front of the camp there are dozens of cars, buses and (too) many hot-dog, soft-drink, flower and book stands.
Hundreds of brightly, colourfully dressed and well-fed tourists bumbling about give a Disneyesque quality to the picture.
Inside the camp only a few barracks are still more or less original while most of them are extensively adapted inside to house exhibitions that in general do not add to understanding what camplife must have been like, It's all so clinical that it sooner detracts from that.
Worst of all are the baracks where there is contemporary art (certainly not Art!) that "shows how it was".
If that stuff must be displayed then, in my opinion at least, it should be done in a separate building well off the campgrounds.
Viewing the exhibitions one could almost forget that more groups of people than Jews were murdered here. Though off course the Jews were by far the largest group, the minimal attention given to Gypsies, politicals and POW's is, again: in my opinion, not doing justice to ALL the victims.

Auschwitz II or Birkenau is however a totally different story!

That vast expanse of land enclosed by barbedwire with all the chimney stacks standing forlornly in the middle of nowhere really did make an impression.
The tourists that were there were lost in the emptiness and did not disturb the picture, the few barracks still standing (or rebuilt) really were a depressing sight. The rain on that day also helped I guess .
Even for those who do not believe in the holocaust it must be evident that this place was the Anus Mundi, massmurder or not.

As for all those other places in the world where people have been exterminated, there should be some kind of memorial there.
From the Sioux Nations to Siberia and from Cambodia to Rwanda.
Fat chance of that ever happening though.
Then again, what will it all be worth in a couple of hundred years? How do we regard the victims of Huns, Romans, Zulu's, Conquistadores, Inquisitions and so on? Ancient history.
That same fate will befall the victims of 19th and 20th Century massmurders.

Hmmm, guess some fatalism has crept into me.........

[Pirx]

Sign of our times.
10 countries in 5 days, today: Prague, Krakow, Auchwitz, Bratislava.
But i also think that we never win with "Hundreds of brightly, colourfully dressed and well-fed tourists bumbling about give a Disneyesque quality to the picture.". Even trips from Israel, organised by schools looks strange. Young people discover nothing but Holocoust. No visits to culture centers of modern Polish Jews, no contacts with Poles, no time to see how Jews and Poles lived before wwII. Only surrounded by gunmen, dressed in light blue jackets are runnig through Pleszew and Oswiecim.

[haen2]

I think it was ( a jewish) journalist Finkelstein, who called this "the holocaust industry"
anything for a buck.
HN

[Paddy Keating]

But which crematorium building? The one built by the Poles after the war or the original ones where millions were murdered?

Paddy, please re-read the article provided by Annelie.

Regards,

MJU

And...?

PK

[Njorl]

Annelie post a article regarding inclination of museums run i former KZs to put a fee on entry. Majority of it has nothing to do with Poland, except this passage:

Auschwitz, the biggest Nazi concentration camp, in southern Poland, receives more generous subsidies and has gained the support of Ron Lauder, the American philanthropost, to help to restore the splintering wooden barrack rooms of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Yet you ask:

But which crematorium building? The one built by the Poles after the war or the original ones where millions were murdered?

Paddy, in the article 'crematorium' is mentioned only in connection with Dachau.
Your question seems to be put a bit out of context. Or maybe you know something about crematoriums in former KZ in Germany that had been built by Poles after war "Sorry if I seem bitter!"

Regards,

MJU

[Paddy Keating]

I suggest you do some research...

[Njorl]

I suggest you do some research...

I know what you have/had on mind. I was rather curious of shortcuts in proces of thinking you made, having read that article:

German museums in former KZs are to put fees on entry -> crematorium in Auschwitz is a post-war building built by Poles

It looked like you jumped out like a devil from a box with your rhetoric question. This is what made me react.

MJU

[Paddy Keating]

The topic is about Auschwitz. I might be confusing it with gas chambers. Back in 1995, it was admitted that authorities responsible for the management of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex built a gas chamber in 1948 for propaganda and tourism-related purposes. This building, described as Krema 1, is still shown to tourists by guides who invariably fail to mention that the building is a fake.

WHEN Auschwitz was transformed into a museum after the war, the decision was taken to concentrate the history of the whole complex into one of its components parts. The infamous crematoria where the mass murders had taken place lay in ruins in Birkenau, two miles away. The committee felt that a crematorium was required at the end of the memorial journey, and Crematorium I was reconstructed to speak for the history of the incinerators at Birkenau.

This program of usurpation was rather detailed. A chimney, the ultimate symbol of Birkenau, was re-created; four hatched openings in the roof, as if for pouring Zyklon B into the gas chamber below, were installed, and two of the three furnaces were rebuilt using original parts. There are no signs to explain these restitutions, they were not marked at the time, and the guides remain silent about it when they take visitors through this building that is presumed by the tourist to be the place where it happened.

From: Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present, Robert Jan van Pelt and Debórah Dwork, Yale University Press, London 1996, p. 364.

Of course, this is not to suggest that people were not gassed en masse at this complex. We know that they were. But it is interesting that there has never been any acknowledgement nor apology from the Polish authorities for this appalling disrespect to the victims. The truth is quite ghastly enough without the need for any exaggeration or enhancement. I believe that Dr David Irving was convicted for claiming that Krema 1 was a fake some years before the Poles admitted it.

PK

[Njorl]

I'd rather bet on propaganda purposes when speaking of reasons to rebuild any part of KZ Auschwitz-Birkenau and concealing that fact to the open public.

Thank you for reply, Paddy.

Regards,

MJU

[Paddy Keating]

You are probably right. At least, now you know, I hope, that I was not making an anti-Polish remark! It was just a comment about something that happened.

PK

[Pirx]

It's always problem what to do with historical ruins: rebuild or not? Leave it like it was found or show modern people how it was? I guess this discusion starts with Evans reconstruction of Knossos, and has as many supporters as enemies.

[phylo_roadking]

Rebuilding to make a location safe for a modern-day huge influx of toiurists is a compromise that has to be made - but should always be clearly identified as such! Having been to Knossos in the last two years, thankfully I'd always known about Evan's "period" reconstruction - in concrete! - so knew what to look for, and what to look past, if you see what I mean. Which is rather fortunate - cos nothing is marked as such in the Palace itself!

Those in the know however can THEN go to the "Palace of Malia", about a mile outside the town of Malia, a palace of VERY similar size and construction as Knossos! BUT this is an ongoing dig, and not a pristine spectator's exhibit - and somehow better for it...

Compare this is the first ever archeological site I remember visiting as a "site", the Yorvik dig in York, now the Yorvik Centre; let's face it, to the "toured" observer and early teen it was a hole in the ground about which I knew very little, but the present "reconstruction" under the visitor's centre at least provides/cashes in on the city's heritage suitably LOL BUT even if it wasn't quite clear its a reconstruction its labelled suitably! And the history of the original site, now buried beneath the centre again for posterity well-recorded for those interested.

But what should NEVER happen is gross misrepresentation. Only an idiot would reckon the ancient Cretans built in concrete! But modern reconstructions of modern buildings? Especially those destroyed in war or the events of war? No. If not forn the sheer honesty factor - their destruction TOO was a historical event! Not only is is misrepresentation, its also trying to turn back the clock, which to me is patently wrong. A big sign saying "oops sorry we blew this up!" would be a hell of a lot better....

Different from a modern Reichstag however - whose destruction and RE construction are events in a long timeline and NOT done to try and reconstruct, but to carry the building forward.

[Landser]

Here are some interesting thoughts
on the socalled "Holocult".



Holocult kitsch at its best: The Crime of Remembering the Holocaust

Source:  ZioPedia By Sultan Knish, Thursday, 26 April 2007

There has for a while now been building a steady chorus of protest over commemorating the Holocaust. The voices are both Jewish and Non-Jewish. Some of them come from the left which indicts the Holocaust for being too limited to Jews to be worth remembering and as a pretext for oppressing the poor paleo-terrorist people. Some come from the right which claims the whole thing is anti-Christian and just prevents reconciliation between the Jews and everyone else. Too much, the voices cry. Too much remembrance. Too much dedicated to remembering it. Who needs it anyway.
David Klinghoffer sums up this view quite nicely when he writes, "Our preoccupation with the ultimate symbol of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, has become notorious. There is no end in sight to the Holocaust history books, Holocaust novels, Holocaust television shows, Holocaust magazine and newspaper articles, chairs in Holocaust studies at universities, Holocaust museums, Holocaust poems, Holocaust paintings, Holocaust sculptures..." Remembering the Holocaust is then a preoccupation. Some annoying obsession we can't seem to let go of.
These same voices do not seem to think that the Civil War is a notorious preoccupation though it happened nearly a century and a half ago, though there are Civil War memorials, Civil War television shows, Civil War movies, Civil War books, Civil War newspaper articles, Civil War paintings, Civil War studies, Civil War poems.Folks like Klinghoffer do not pen articles asking Americans to give up their preoccupation with the Civil War, to cry a halt, enough is enough. They feel no irritation at it in the least.
For that matter Klinghoffer is not bothered by WW2 memorials, television shows, movies, books, magazine articles, studies and poems. It's perfectly okay to be 'preoccupied' with WW2, just not with the Jewish end of it. The moment studying WW2 slips into studying what happened to the Jews in WW2, it instantly becomes to him an example of neurotic behavior. An obsession with anti-Semitism. An unhealthy fixation on the murder of six million Jews.
When the Jews of Europe first went out of the world, the Holocaust was not a safe subject for discussion, nor was had happened to them. The allies who issued statements condemning German atrocities in leaflets dropped over Germany, did not mention the Jews. Neither did Roosevelt in his radio addresses. Neither did the Pope. The Jews who were liberated from the concentration camps (now the subject of many glowing documentaries) were not set free, for the most part they were considered DP's, Displaced Persons, and were put right back into camps with barbed wire, guarded by armed German guards. There was little if any recognition that anything particular had happened to them.
The Jews were considered citizens of their countries of origin meant to be returned there, never mind the fact that the citizens of most of those countries had willingly played a part in butchering them and that many of those countries were now under Stalinist rule. Truman fumed over a handful of Jewish refugees admitted to the United States. Eisenhower fumed over the Jews in the DP camps who refused to do what they were told. The State Department in partnership with the British fumed that despite their best hopes, some Jews had survived the Holocaust after all and were headed on illegal boats to British ruled Israel.After the Holocaust there was no flood of memoirs. There was little in the way of a uniquely Jewish historical understanding of what had gone on.
The academic, political and press consensus was that the Nazis had been mean people who had killed a lot of people, for no particular reason, except that they were against democracy. An echo of that kind of silly stupid rhetoric can still be heard in Bush's speeches when he presumes that Democracy equates with morality and a lack of it with amorality. That is belied by the fact that in WW2 fascist regimes and Fascist nations like Mussolini, Tojo and Franco did more to save Jews than democratic Switzerland or democratic France did, when they handed over Jews to the Nazis to be shot. Most of the Nazis who had been convicted of war crimes were prematurely released under pressure from the German government.
Former Nazis had no trouble finding plenty of countries to take them in from Argentina to Ireland to America, which brought in many of them to 'fight Communism.' Post-WW2 discussions of atrocities were far more likely to focus on Hiroshima and Dresden than on Auschwitz and Dachau. In the Senate, Senator Joseph McCarthy, who before hijacking and wrecking a legitimate investigation into Communist infiltration of America, had stood on the Senate floor thundering demands that the SS perpetrators of the Malmedy Massacre of 84 US troops be freed because their confessions had been obtained under duress (shades of Gitmo).
The SS men who had murdered American soldiers were eventually all released in a matter of years. As were most of those who had been responsible for the Holocaust. On the Holocaust itself there was a shameful silence. The USSR denied any Holocaust of Jews had taken place. Even decades later when it granted that it had, it limited the number to 3 million, those Jews who had been living in Soviet territories. The rest didn't matter. Many of those refugees had made it out of German territory into the USSR had been shot as German spies. Behind the scenes Stalin was hatching a plan for a Soviet Holocaust of the Jews. One that would permit the USSR to carry off a Holocaust while still keep Communists and socialist around the world loyal to the Soviet Union, using plausible deniability.
Up until this point Communism had managed to murder hundreds of thousands of Jews, imprison many more and suppress Jewish culture and religion, while still being claimed by liberal Jews and non-Jews around the world, from Time Magazine to H.G. Wells to the Archbishop of Canterbury. There was no reason, Stalin thought, he couldn't wipe out all the Jews and still remain the world's beloved, Uncle Joe. The Allies were meanwhile too busy embracing our newfound German allies against Communism to want to hear anything about their crimes. The newly hatched Israeli government was all too willing to sweep the whole thing under the rug in order to build ties with Germany.
When future Prime Minister Begin led a march of Holocaust survivors in protest to the Knesset against the German policies of the Labor Socialist government, they were tear gassed by the police. I could tell far worse stories but I will not. No one wanted to hear from those had survived the Holocaust.Today they are dying and we are hearing from them. We are remembering and listening, for what little good it does and still there are still many voices raised in protest that would prefer we didn't. Voices from the right and the left, voices of conservative and liberal Jews. Rabbi Daniel Lapin is outraged that the Holocaust Museum linked Christian anti-Semitism to the Holocaust, as if Germany and Eastern Europe in the first half of the 20th century had been populated entirely by Hindus.
David Klinghoffer of course finds all the Holocaust talk to be a bit too much.But we remember. Many thousands of years later we pray at the gravesite of Rachel our mother. Thousands of years later we weep at the remnant wall of the temple. We stand at Masada and each ten day interval between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur we recite piyutim remembering those murdered in the Crusades. We have not forgotten and we will not forget. To the 'Jewish' Klinghoffers of the right and the left, sneering at us, we can only reply to them as we do at the Seder, that is it a matter of Lachem Ve'Lo Lo. It is to us that this matter not to you. It is to us who are a part of it, who feel it in our hearts and our souls. You have no part of it or a part in us. As Naomi said to Orpah, go home. Our home is with the Jewish people, the living and the dead. Yours is elsewhere. Go and find it wherever it may be.

[Paddy Keating]

What a rant...

PK

[sniper1shot]

Landser- Thanks for the write up.....but I got lost by the end of it.

Are you making a statement or answering someone else posts??